Spectrum Monitoring Based on the VITA 49 Standard and a General-Purpose RF Platform

Spectrum monitoring has become a topic of interest in the recent decades due to the increase of wireless communication systems. Traditional methods for spectrum monitoring use a spectrum analyzer to capture and analyze signals. Furthermore, these traditional methods rely on a human observer and largely consider the RF environment constant. As a result, they are not only high cost, but also inefficient. The objective of this research is building a scalable and a low-cost wideband spectrum monitoring system. A unique feature of the system is due to the use of VME bus International Trade Association (VITA) 49 standard. The proposed system is more appropriate for a dynamic RF spectrum environment and is built using off-the-shelf computer hardware and the low-cost Software-Defined Radio (SDR) R820T to collect spectral and temporal data of the spectrum around the city of Fort Wayne